


Easy on the nebula

by Prim_the_Amazing



Category: Campaign (Podcast)
Genre: BHIKKE, Drunkenness, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 19:18:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13196805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: Zero honestly doesn’t know why he keeps inviting Blue to BHIKKE as his plus one when he clearly hates it so much, but what’s even more baffling is the fact that Blue keeps accepting.





	Easy on the nebula

Zero honestly doesn’t know why he keeps inviting Blue to BHIKKE as his plus one when he clearly hates it so much, but what’s even more baffling is the fact that Blue keeps _accepting._

Blue wrinkles his nose in distaste at a passing bounty hunter that’s covered in a particularly impressive amount of spikes and leather, which is saying something considering how fond of spikes and leather bounty hunters as a community are as a whole.

“Do these people have no sense of restraint?”

Zero snorts softly. “You did cover the entire interior of your ship with wooden paneling, boss.”

“That’s called a display of wealth and it’s a powerplay, Zero, which makes it perfectly acceptable for me to do it. What exactly does spiked shoulder _and_ elbow plates say about your bank account?”

“Depends on the material, I guess. Plastic: rookie. Metal: survived this long thanks to dumb luck.”

“At least you seem to have some sense of style,” Blue says, as if he’s trying to soothe himself from all of the bad fashion choices happening around him.

“I do admittedly like leather a lot,” he says.

“Yes, well, but you look good in it, so that’s entirely besides the point. Let’s go shopping already.”

He has to consciously restrain himself from flashing a winky face emoji on his face plate at the compliment, and really, this is the reason why inviting Blue is such a dumb idea. One of the many, many reasons.

They go shopping. Zero likes shopping. Blue _loves_ shopping. He is, somehow, despite his entire personality, actually pretty good with words, so he haggles well. And every last arrogant fiber of Blue’s body revels in winning, and getting a good deal on a nice vibroknife Zero was eyeing is as good as besting a political rival for his petty mind, never mind the fact that he’s rich enough to outright buy most of the entire booths here. That’s another thing: Blue mostly just shops for Zero. At least when they’re on BHIKKE, where a solid ninety percent of the booths are weapons, armor, or booze focused. When Blue shops for himself, it’s for clothes and interior decoration or things for the Bluebird, and it’s at shops so fancy they’re as hushed as a library and there are no price tags on any of the wares.

Blue haggles for a blaster until he’s flushed in the face, and at the end he looks satisfied and a little sweaty in a way that makes Zero secretly and guiltily snap a few pictures of him.

“Wanna go get a drink?” he asks when he’s carrying so many bags for Blue (i.e all of them) that it’s becoming challenging to hold all of the straps at once. Anakin Skywalker, and they’re still on only the first workday of BHIKKE.

“I suppose I am a little parched,” he grants, and so Zero tries to subtly steer them towards a drinkhole that doesn’t look too full and rowdy. He likes full and rowdy just fine, but he’d prefer to indulge in it when Blue’s safely asleep in their hotel room. Plus one’s are sorta covered underneath the protection clause of BHIKKE and he doesn’t have a bounty on him besides, but Bounty Hunters are an impulsive and hot blooded lot, and he’d rather not take his chances on Blue getting harmed.

He’s successful enough that they get away with taking over two whole tables to pile their bags on after a truly jaw dropping tip to the waiter, and then they order their drinks.

“Just grog,” Zero says, because Ganks have a stamina that is most of the time helpful, but during certain other times, say, like while he’s trying to get drunk, can be kind of annoying. “And a straw.”

“Blue Nebula,” Blue says decisively.

“Easy on the nebula,” Zero mutters quickly to the waiter as she leaves-- Blue’s a lightweight, which is definitely hilarious and adorable, but he’d rather not have to carry him and the truly outrageous amount of bags up to the hotel room at the same time.

He turns his attention back to Blue to see if he caught that and is going to be all indignant about it, and just because that’s where his attention naturally gravitates most of the time. He’s looking into his glasses in that particular way that tells him that he’s currently deep in some code or emails.

“Hey,” he says, reaching out and plucking the glasses off of Blue to an answering startled/outraged squawk. “No work during BHIKKE, remember?”

“But--” Blue whines.

“Ah-ah!” Zero wags a finger at him, hooking the glasses in the collar of his shirt for safekeeping. “Do you want for me to ditch you and go and hunt down a bounty?”

Blue frowns. “You’d bring down the entirety of the expo down on us like a sack of bricks.”

“Exactly. Neither of us want that, so, no work! Partying, drinking, and shopping only allowed.” One of the finer rules he’s had to follow in his life, definitely.

“That’s not the same thing at all! Besides, isn’t your job to keep me safe, which I’m _assuming_ you’re doing right n--”

Thankfully, the waiter comes with their drinks then before Zero has to come up with some bullshit argument to win the debate.

Blue is distracted, Zero sips at his grog--tastes awful, but he can already tell it’ll at least get him buzzed--and they then pass some time with Blue bitching about the interior decorating of the place and Zero listening to Blue bitch, which he is an expert at and even kind of enjoys, which he feels probably doesn’t say a whole lot of good things about his mental state, but whatever.

He gets so into listening to Blue bitch, in fact, that he doesn’t really register the waiter quietly refilling their drinks whenever they start approaching the bottom of their glasses.

“--an’ if they just let _me_ design it it’d be so much better! Zero! You know!?”

“Uh huh,” he says, which is what he’s said in response to everyone of Blue’s questions for the last twenty minutes now. And then he blinks a little, perplexed. That slur to his voice…

His eyes dart down to the glass of Blue Nebula that still looks oddly full, over to the waiter who’s watching them like a hawk-- _oh,_ goddamnit.

“Yeah, she isn’t getting another tip like that no matter what she thinks,” he grumbles, and focuses on Blue. He’s flushed, gesticulating broadly with one hand as he goes on, swaying a little in his seat along with the larger motions, and his eyes aren’t entirely focused on Zero.

“I think it’s about time we head back to the hotel room, buddy,” he says, and then goes about the business of trying to pick all of the shopping bags again without dropping any of them. “Toss some credit chits on the table, let’s go.”

“--gothic minimalism is so three decades ago… hmm? Wazzat? Why’re you leaving, Zero?”

“Sleep,” he says, deciding to go with short, one syllable words for now in the hopes that they’ll sink in. “You. Me. Come on.”

Blue blinks muzzily at him for a moment before drunkenly nodding. “Okay, if you’re sleepy, Zero.”

“Sure. Yep. I’m sleepy.” He tries not to sigh with longing as they pass a group of bounty hunters doing a kegstand. There’ll be time for that later. There always is. Blue inevitably gets sick of the whole thing three days in and locks himself inside of the hotel room to just focus on his work, leaving Zero to party like there’s no tomorrow for the last two days.

He doesn’t quite have to carry Blue, but there’s definitely some heavy leaning going on. He’s mostly glad for it, because it means that he doesn’t have to fear losing Blue in the crowd if nothing else.

Eventually, they stumble up to their hotel room, and Zero lets all of the packages fall to the floor with a sigh after they finally pass through the door. He kicks it closed behind him and hears its automated click and woah Blue’s suddenly in his face. His helmet. Whatever. He’s very close, is the thing.

“Um,” he says dumbly, and he blames the grog. He’d be worried (hoping for) about maybe an incoming kiss, except that’s no danger at all with his helmet in the way. “What’s up, buddy?”

Blue just sighs quietly, closes his eyes, and leans his forehead against Zero’s face plate. It’s… it feels _crazy_ intimate, actually, what the heck. As close to kissing as he can get, really, and is that what Blue’s _trying_ to--?

Blue springs abruptly away with a devilish cackle, his re-stolen glasses clutched in one hand.

“What,” Zero says, still caught up in the moment of Blue standing so close that he was fogging his visor up a little with every exhalation.

“Not even the Emperor himself could stop me from working, you scrub--” Blue starts gloating as he puts on his glasses and runs away from him.

“Wha--hey, no! You told me not to let you email your coworkers while you’re drunk again! Get back here!”

And so starts a very stupid, not entirely sober chase across the hotel room, stumbling into and over furniture and no doubt giving the neighbours some very strange ideas about what’s going on in here. Zero inevitably catches Blue though, because he’s ten times as sober and a million times more athletically adept. Blue whines and complains as Zero reclaims the glasses, and he resolves to just straight up hide them this time.

“Come on,” he pants, his blood rushing after the short chase (and, admittedly, from the brief moment of confused affection/arousal), “time for bed.”

And then he turns around to see that there’s only one bed.

It’s moments like these that make him long for the ability to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

So, there’s been a mistake in the booking. They could… probably _not_ get this fixed considering what a booking nightmare every BHIKKE convention is. Definitely not without Blue’s _sober_ silver tongue to back him up. They’ll have to sleep back on the Bluebird, which really isn’t that bad, the ship’s luxurious as hell, it’d just mean some extra walking every day… like krif Zero’s dragging all of the bags and Blue’s drunken ass back over to the Bluebird tonight though, he’s so stressed out that he’s actually starting to get tired. He just wants to lie down, goddamnit. While knowing that Blue’s safe. Is that too much to ask?

Zero looks from Blue to the bed, to the door, back to Blue and then the bed.

“Oh, krif it,” he says, making his decision. He’s slept with his helmet on before anyways.

“Language,” Blue scolds him blearily.

“We’re not being filmed, Blue,” he says, leading him towards the edge of the bed where he sits him down. He kneels down and starts unlacing his boot. He’ll just take off the bare minimum; he’s tired and Blue’s too drunk for him to be comfortable with taking off more than his coat besides.

He tugs the left boot off, and glances up towards Blue. It’s a mistake. The ceiling light and the angle combine in just the right way to make it look like there’s a halo around his head, lighting up his red hair, and the expression on his face is oddly soft and fond as he looks down on Zero.

“You’re good,” he says, and then clumsily pats his helmet. It breaks the spell a little, and makes it worse in other ways.

Zero huffs, not sure how to otherwise respond, and tries to just concentrate on taking the other boot off before his pining gives him a heart attack. Afterwards, his coat, jacket, and vest follow. Krif, he knows BHIKKE’s being hosted on one of the colder planets this year, but still, how doesn’t he combust under all of those layers? Sure, Zero’s always wearing a whole lot of clothes, but that’s different. He’s got an internal cooling system.

He manhandles Blue into lying down on the bed, and he lets himself be manhandled. If only getting him to sleep was always so easy.

Zero turns off the lights, toes out of his boots, and crawls into the other side of the bed, leaving some space between them. “Night, Blue.”

Blue immediately disregards the space he intentionally put between them and tosses an arm across his chest, hooking a leg around one of his, fingers fisting tightly into the material of his suit like he’s gonna try and shake him off.

“Night, Zero,” Blue replies, and immediately conks out.

Zero stares helplessly up at the ceiling for a much longer time.

Krif, but it’s only the first workday of BHIKKE. There’s _four_ more to go.

Blue sleepily nuzzles into his neck.

Okay. Okay. Zero might know why he keeps inviting Blue to BHIKKE as his plus one when he clearly hates it so much, and shit like this might be exactly why. Why Blue keeps accepting, though, is absolutely beyond him.


End file.
